A 38-year-old cannabis farmer told by his drugs masters to pretend he was 16 if he was caught at the Bradford house where he was tending 90 plants has been jailed for 12 months.

Huu Truong will automatically be deported back to Vietnam after he has served his sentence, Recorder Anthony Hawks said today.

Truong was arrested after answering the door to the police at the drugs farm in Hallbank Close, Wibsey, on April 28, prosecutor Alisha Kaye told Bradford Crown Court.

There was food in the fridge and freezer and he had a phone, cash and the keys to the property.

He was remanded in custody at HMP Leeds and pleaded guilty to being concerned in the production of cannabis.

Miss Kaye said the electricity meter had been bypassed, there were bin liners of com-post and numerous lights and transformers.

The loft space was covered in foil and 90 plants were growing in there with a potential yield of almost five kilos.

Truong claimed he was 16 and said he had been forced into the back of a lorry in Ukraine and brought to this country. He told the police he owed a debt in Vietnam and was set to work at the cannabis farm.

Although he had the keys to the house he had nowhere else to go.

His barrister, Satpal Roth Sharma, conceded that he had £24 in cash, a phone and the keys but he was to some extent being controlled by those further up the chain.

They told him to lie about his age if he was arrested, Miss Roth Sharma said. Truong was in reality born in 1984 and aged 38.

He did not provide the police with the phone’s PIN number because he couldn’t remember it. He wasn’t trying to obstruct the investigation.

“He felt threatened to remain in his role as a gardener,” Miss Roth Sharma stated.

Truong had no home to go to in Vietnam and hoped to seek asylum here, she told the court.

Recorder Hawks said that Truong had arrived illegally in the United Kingdom before he was caught tending the drugs crop.

“Cannabis farms are becoming a scourge in this country and people who become involved in running them must expect immediate custodial sentences,” he warned.

He ordered the forfeiture and destruction of the cannabis plants and the growing paraphernalia.

He told Truong that because of the length of the jail sentence he will be automatically deported from the UK.